Summary

A useless conversion of an over-rated game

The Good

There are loads of options and loads of moves available, as well as a unique viewpoint which ensures that you can see lots of the action.

The Bad

The slow tempo of the original turned into downright sluggishness on the Amiga version, with the players lurching around and being pretty tricky to control. Football should be a fast, frantic end-to-end game - in this it takes ages for the ball to get anywhere.

There are loads of moves, but the animation of the players didn't depict them very well. What's more, the game has a habit of taking over your control at times, often making successful tackles and runs past opponents without your control. The assistance to your shooting makes it far too easy to get a shot on target - and the feeble nature of many of the goalkeepers means that you score too frequently.

Passing was almost impossible, with neither the natural one-touch system of Sensible Soccer, or any kind of challenging system, and it wasn't easy to beat opponents while running either. It all becomes a game of hit-and-hope pretty quickly.

The Bottom Line

For years, EA have churned out identikit versions of this license, with only 2 or 3 of them making significant gameplay alterations. Its excess popularity comes down to a) nice graphics and b) the fact that your moves look good even when you've had no effect on them, so it doesn't take much effort or skill.

Fortunately, the Amiga incarnation never went any further, while it's last version of Sensible World of Soccer was released in 1997. I doubt anyone ever considered whether an Amiga version was feasible - the only thought appears to have been "fumble it together, but make sure it's out for the Christmas money"